Nestor Makhno

Nestor Makhno (26 October 1888-6 July 1934) was the leader of the Free Territory in Ukraine from 5 January 1919 to 28 August 1921, leading the anarchit Black Army during the Russian Civil War. Makhno created an area of Ukraine where people were free of any governmental leadership, defending it first from the White Army and then from the Bolsheviks; in 1921 he was defeated by the Red Army and forced to go into exile in Paris.

Biography
Nestor Makhno was born on 26 October 1888 in Huliaipole, Yekaterinoslav Governorate, Russian Empire (present-day Zaporizhia Oblast, Ukraine). He initially worked on the farms of kulaks, and he later worked as an ironworker, entering revolutionary politics in the early 1900s to resist the oppression by Czar Nicholas II of Russia. He was imprisoned for his views, but in 1917 he was freed after the Russian Revolution and formed a peasants' union. After the establisment of the Ukrainian State by General Pavlo Skoropadsky in April 1918, Makhno led the peasants against the puppet state set up by the German Empire and Austria-Hungary. Makhno formed the anarchist Black Army, and by 1919 the peasants mostly supported either Makhno or the socialist Nikifor Grigoriev. Makhno recruited Jews, anarchists, and Ukrainian peasants, and during the Russian Civil War his forces raided German and Mennonite settlements. Makhno was accused of anti-Semitism and pogroms by the Bolsheviks, but he gave explicit orders to his troops not to rob or attack peaceful Jews and only to attack the bourgeoisie, be they Russian, Ukrainian, or Jewish. Makhno had a strange alliance with Nikifor Grigoriev, who changed sides often during the civil war; in 1919, Grigoriev was killed by Makhno after he betrayed him for the last time. Makhno formed a brief alliance with the Red Army to defeat Anton Denikin's White Army, but in March 1921 larger Soviet forces eventually forced Makhno to go to exile into Europe. He worked as a carpenter and stage-hand in Paris until his 1934 death.